


Principles of Magnetism (a Comedy of Manners)

by acaramelmacchiato



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Farce, M/M, Slow Burn, Victorian Attitudes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 19:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15870483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaramelmacchiato/pseuds/acaramelmacchiato
Summary: The one where they're married but it's still Victorian times and also it's an accident.





	1. A Slip of the Pen

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt is "accidental marriage but it’s still the 1840s and in the arctic" and by god. Accidental marriage it is. Thanks again to sath, the best buddy that there is, for this prompt.

 

_“I am not concerned with how (apart from prayer) we may occupy ourselves over the long winters and put it to you thus: Captain Crozier and Commander Fitzjames are by now accustomed to marital conversation with one another which is great sport to witness. The liveliness of their adversarial talk will give me many hours of diversion I do not doubt.”_

_Sir John Franklin, Captain HM Erebus, responds to a reader’s question about what there is to do in the officers’ mess during an Arctic Winter._

 

Sir John Franklin looked indifferently at _The Standard_. He was at breakfast, and during the pause he had taken to scrutinize the page, butter slipped from his biscuit onto the imprint.

“Martial, I’m sure I said.”

“Wrote,” said Crozier hoarsely. He cleared his throat and continued: “Wrote, Sir John, this being—as I have said—your published letter.”

“And I think it very impertinent of the fellow to send my letters to print! Here I thought he was simply asking.”

Crozier felt the first pains of a headache. His old friend had become dictatorial and sensitive in Van Dieman’s Land, and dealing with him was a political enterprise for which Crozier had not the talent, training, or patience. He stabbed the paper with his finger, just avoiding the spreading stain of butter. “You must write to _The Standard_ again, Sir John. Clarify yourself and recant your—unfortunate spelling.”

“Spelling, sir? Recant, sir? I must do nothing like it! Francis, it is a typesetting error, nothing more. A triviality, and it looks very ill on us to be upset by it, now that we are but months shy of our great journey!”

“I beseech you,” Crozier tried more fulsomely, but Sir John lost patience and cut him off.

“And I say I do not hear it. I’ve half a mind to write anyway and correct only my statement that you will be amusing, for right now I find you very dull— ‘pon my honor! Very dull indeed!”

“Perhaps you find me dull,” said Crozier in as mild a tone as he might order someone mastheaded, “because the context is not _marital_?”

Sir John’s teacup crashed into his saucer as he stood. “I will hear no more of it! Are you an officer in Her Majesty’s Navy, Francis? And have you not duties? I have. I go now to the Comptroller of Victualing and I shall hear no more of your pettifogging, do you understand?”

He buttoned his coat furiously and left Crozier alone at his table.

Crozier took a dazed seat in Sir John’s now empty chair. “Marital,” he said, wonderingly.

The headache had arrived.

 

* * *

 

 _Torbath Park, Liverpool  
_ _10 February 1845_

_Well now Francis,_

_I trust old boy you have seen the enclosed Paper. I have known much of life but never in it (I say never until now) have I known a man to Shit Himself from Laughing such as I have just done. My best to Fitzjames_ — _I am your perplexed old friend_

_Thomas Blanky_

* * *

 

Her Majesty’s Ship _Terror_ was in Woolwich, dry docked and clad in bright new oak. Even without her masts she was taller than anything surrounding, from the steam factory complex to the clock house to the covered slips, and it lifted Crozier’s heart to see her so smart and lofty.

 _Terror_ should have sunk on the way back from Hudson Bay, and probably again at the Great Ice Barrier. But each time she had limped home to England and was repaired, revived, rebuilt, and floated again. It soothed some of the melancholy in him to see it—hadn’t he himself almost been sunk beyond what seemed worth the effort to salvage, so many times? Three months ago he had been drunk in Italy, writing Sophia unhinged letters from in the meager shade of stone pines and growing a beard.

But they both had come out of it, _Terror_ and Crozier. They were returned to seagoing service, were furnishing themselves for another great journey north. It roused his ambition to stand before the graceful new hull, and for a moment he could see a future for himself. Before the details of that future took form, he was slapped on the back so energetically he saw stars.

“Trying to smack that spleen out of you,” said Thomas Blanky, who had come up quietly behind him. “Did it work?”

Crozier smiled and took his friend’s hand. “Know I would never exert rank on you, Thomas, but I beg you not to smack anything out of me—out of anyone—if that is the force with which you do it. Or we shall all go overboard before we make Greenhithe.”

“We shall see, won’t we,” said Blanky enigmatically. He looked with some mistrust at the steam engine. “When will yon great teapot be stowed?”

Crozier nodded, for he was satisfied with the work. “Very soon. Those cables and that winch there are being prepared to lower it down where the carpenter, the stoker, the caulker and their mates are waiting to affix it. And tomorrow we shall refinish the deck over it.”

“Aye,” said Blanky, squinting up at the ship’s waist, “quite the hole she has through her.”

“We shall have whole decks soon enough,” said Crozier. “Such as ever we danced a quadrille upon.”

“Knocked the spleen out, indeed! I would call that speech _optimism_ , Francis.”

“Any captain would be glad to see his ship looking so fine.”

“Would he indeed? Or can we credit your remarkable mood to—what did Franklin say? Your _marital amusement_.”

Crozier scowled at him. “Not more of that. I burnt your letter.”

Blanky had dropped his sly look and was fully grinning. “You’re a cool one, I must say, slipping it in the papers like you did.”

“Thomas,” said Crozier, frustrated.

“Francis,” Blanky replied.

“Captain Crozier?” said someone else.

They both turned, and Crozier barely held back a groan. Fitzjames waved at them through the toiling crowd of sailors and steam factory workers.

“I suppose,” said Blanky confidentially, “we’d spoken of the devil.”

“I say, Captain Crozier!” Fitzjames made his way before them.

There was another blue-jacketed man with him, whose graying hair and whiskers did not diminish an overall youthful appearance. Crozier had come to understand that there were a thousand of these fellows, refined and high-spirited young officers fetched up in England with nothing to do but scheme their way back to sea. They were underfoot at Somerset House and Horse Guards Parade, identical and infinite and always laughing—and each and every one of them would swear before a judge that his greatest friend in the world was James Fitzjames.

Blanky touched the brim of his cap to Fitzjames. “Commander.”

“Captain Crozier, Mr. Blanky. Of course you both know Lieutenant Le Vesconte? We’ve just managed to appropriate him for _Erebus_ , and let me say it took fighting off many a clement revenue cruise to get him his shot at the ice.”

Le Vesconte gave them a modest smile. “Anything at all if I may never see a pile of guano again, gentlemen.”

“Hear, hear,” said Fitzjames.

“There will be _some_ guano,” Blanky clarified.

There was a general period of shaking hands. Crozier’s good mood was dimming rapidly. Fitzjames had the general effect on him of a tropical disease, draining his energy and making him desperately thirsty. He had drunk wine in France and Italy while scrawling out his illegible and pathetic letters, and proven once and for all the true necessity of whiskey in putting his mood to rights.

“I see you are skirmishing with the old steam engine, but take heart,” said Fitzjames, squinting at the frustrating work of securing the huge apparatus to the winch. “I attended the _Rattler_ ’s trials and she made a fair ten knots—I promise you this engine here makes the screw quite worth all the effort.”

“D’you hear that, Francis?” said Blanky without affect. “It makes the screw worth all the effort.”

Crozier stepped on his foot.

“Just so,” Fitzjames continued, his tone momentarily uncertain. “I see you have some work before you, and we two are due at the superintendent’s. But I wonder if you might dine with us later at the Union?”

“Oh, but we would be delighted,” said Blanky.

Crozier was trapped by Blanky’s occasionally sadistic waggishness. “Expect us,” he agreed.

 

* * *

 

“The height of a man’s chest,” said Blanky to the entranced company. “And more vicious than lions.”

“Vicious?” said Fitzjames incredulously. “I have seen pictures and the bird looks rather like a peer at the opera. Such a farcical contradiction seems more the work of Mayhew and Lemon than Nature and the Almighty.”

“Oh, quite vicious,” Crozier affirmed. “They have beaks like any officer’s dirk and the whole creature is deadly strong and fast.”

“I pray then that we shall see the penguins in their herds as you describe, sir,” said Le Vesconte. “I have a great interest in exotic creatures and delight to see them with my own eyes.”

“The delight is invariably one-sided,” said Fitzjames, “as Henry you express it to all these unfortunates with your loaded musket. Though I shall like to see you take on the fierce penguin, you are quite within your rights! Anyone who dresses for the evening all day long must expect the British Navy or a musket ball sooner or later.”

Le Vesconte and—traitorously—Blanky laughed at this remark.

Dinner had been a social exertion that promised to fatigue Crozier through the rest of the week. As it turned out, Blanky and Crozier completed their business earlier than Fitzjames and Le Vesconte, as labor was ordered to stop by seven o’clock. They therefore had time alone during which they agreed to persuade the polar novices of anything they possibly could. But the fun bled out of it quickly, and by the time their plates were cleared Crozier felt Blanky’s allegiance wavering, won over by Fitzjames’s ready humor.

It was like getting to know James Ross so long ago—sitting in mortification at a man’s plain desperation to be admired. But where Ross had shown himself to be courageous, canny, and a loyal friend, Fitzjames was callow and smirking. A sycophant who had risen too fast. Crozier finished his whiskey in a stinging swallow and glowered.

Fitzjames, who clearly regarded anyone’s failure to laugh at his jests a defect bordering on genuine illness, sent a furrowed brow Crozier’s way. “Crozier, my dear fellow, have we stirred up some awful penguinical nightmare? You do not look at all the thing,” he said, and caught the sleeve of a waiter who was passing by with a decanter. “Whiskey for my friend, if you please, or he will not last the night."

Crozier’s glass was refreshed, and he was about to rebuke Fitzjames for his impertinence when they were suddenly interrupted. The interloper was a clean-shaven and very young man of somewhat upsetting appearance—a patterned waistcoat and his collar askew—who nervously begged their pardon.

“Gentleman, I say again I am so sorry to interrupt your dinner. Am I right to presume that you, sirs, are Captains Crozier and Fitzjames?”

“We are, sir, and so you hold the weather gage over us,” said Fitzjames, remarkably annoyed. He had lost all his animation after the somewhat uncivil interruption and gave the stranger a look of such haughtiness that the man’s fingers went white where they clutched his hat. Even Le Vesconte seemed surprised at his friend’s sudden bad temper.

“The—excuse me, the weather, sir?”

“The advantage,” said Crozier, incongruously kinder than Fitzjames. “We do not know you.”

“Oh of course, I beg your pardon again. My name is Charles Smith, and I work for _The Standard_ , a daily evening paper for which I have three farthings a line—”

“—If this concerns Sir John Franklin and ‘ _what there is to do in the officers’ mess during an Arctic Winter_ ,’ I shall give you three farthings right now to write a line on something else,” said Fitzjames.

Smith became quite pale. “It does,” he said, summoning his voice after a grueling silence, “indeed it does concern that.”

“By Christ,” said Crozier. He took a lengthy taste of his fresh glass of whiskey.

“I wondered, Captains, if you might help our readers to understand what Captain Franklin meant when he wrote that you are ‘accustomed to marital conversation with one another.’ As you see with—what you said about the weather—we landsmen are all so sadly lost when presented with the nautical dialect, even those of us who studied Greek such as myself, and must impose ourselves on you for translation.”

“We have nothing to say, sir,” Fitzjames replied coldly.

But Crozier was roused. Sir John had been dismissive of his warning. _Pettifogging_ , he had called it, as if Crozier was a whining clerk. And here was proof that the problem had not gone away—that Crozier had been right indeed. He wet his throat and turned his eye on the journalist Smith, who positively flinched. “It is not a nautical term, sir, it is a spelling error—”

“—Take care,” said Fitzjames quietly.

“No, I want him to hear it, why would I not?” Crozier heard his own voice rising as he flinched away from Fitzjames, who had touched his arm. “I want this whole imbecilic episode ended. Mr. Smith, it is a spelling error. Sir John wrote _marital_ when he meant _martial_ , for Fitzjames and I are always at odds. A spelling error, there ends the mystery. Now leave us alone.”

“A spelling error?” said Smith.

“Francis,” said Fitzjames.

Crozier ignored him. “A spelling error.”

 

* * *

 

 _Blackheath, London  
_ _4 March 1845_

_My dear Francis,_

_I am very surprised and happy to hear of your matrimonial situation which when last we met you put to me as the most dismal thing in the world. It is my prayer that it will abate the loneliness you are so often writing me about and see you off to sea with settled affairs._

_Forgive me for joking at your expense, the old gentleman’s spelling has always been hit-and-miss and I call this one a wide shot indeed. But you must see how you have put yourself in this spot by gainsaying Franklin in the papers. For now he has got his back up against a wall and is insisting before all the Sea Lords his spelling was all correct and it seems this is a matter of honor with him now. On our hearing that Franklin intends to emend nothing I was compelled to assist Sir John Barrow in the collection of his lower jaw from the carpet. Of the Sea Lords in a hysteria I have this to say, any whaleman witnessing the scene would have said, She blows! (there was so much spittle) and I wrote to you following this encounter as soon as I was dry._

_My dear Francis you have nothing to do but lie ahull of it for now and pray do not speak to another newspaperman. Ann and I implore you with renewed vigor to come and stay with us at Eliot Place. For one thing it will cut down on the cost of the post and for another I guarantee neither Franklin nor Fitzjames and my own interference should you try again to discourse with the press. Believe I have rebuked myself thoroughly for my earlier amusement and believe me also to be your most devoted friend_

_James Ross_

 

* * *

 

In a legalistic fulfillment of his promise, Sir James Ross’s home in Eliot Place remained free of Fitzjames for only one week.

At the close of this interval he called rather early on a rainy March morning and apparently stood dripping in the hallway as he waited for Crozier to receive him.

“Can’t you send him away?” Crozier said in a low voice to Lady Ann Ross when she told him this.

“The weather is Gothic, Francis, I can’t send him back out into that.”

“Let him get wet. He’s a sailor, so he claims.”

“He is my guest.”

“And then what am I?”

“Vexing, if you want to know! Go down.”

There was no argument he could make that did not seem petulant, so he started out of his room toward the stair. Lady Ross followed closely, and Crozier, who had grown up with sisters, drew up before the first step in suspicion.

“You too?”

“You have me, Francis, I plot to listen through a keyhole and make notes about your conversation in Pitman shorthand for the edification of _The Standard's_  many interested readers.”

“So—”

Lady Ross stared at him. “So, come down.”

They descended the stair to find that Fitzjames was indeed still waiting in the hall, his peaked cap in his hands and a substantial amount of rainwater under his feet. It was the first time Crozier could recall seeing him alone. He seemed very much reduced without the usual boisterous company, quiet and agitated and not, for once, laughing.

“Has someone died?” said Crozier, feeling Lady Ross’s sharp elbow in his side.

“Hist, Captain Crozier,” she said. Then in a kinder voice: “Captain Fitzjames, won’t you come inside?”

Fitzjames regarded his puddle in a state of heavy cogitation. After a minute he seemed to remember where he was and shook his head. “Yes, of course ma’am, thank you. And know I am awful chagrined about the _mare incognitum_ I have left at your door. This weather—I’ll be happy to leave England.”

“I wonder that you do not think it may be worse where you’re going,” said Lady Ross. She led them through to the front parlor. “I’ll have some tea sent in.”

“Thank you but I cannot stay, I’m due shortly in Greenwich,” said Fitzjames, which Crozier found reassuring.

“I shall not impose on any more of your time then,” said Lady Ross, “though I will be just through the door and would delight in offering you such connubial guidance as you may require.”

Crozier closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was standing alone with Fitzjames, both of them distant and upright in the courteous postures they had assumed in Lady Ross’s presence. An uncomfortable silence settled in the room.

For all he had accomplished in his life, Crozier had not made himself amiable. He had nothing to say, not to Fitzjames—this was not a man he knew well, or even particularly liked. But the silence demanded something from him. He cleared his throat, and heard the floorboards creak as Fitzjames shifted. “Well?” he said.

“I have unfortunate news,” said Fitzjames. “And I thought it was best you have it from me. Last night I dined at the Senior with Barrow and Franklin—and a feebler blancmange I declare I never have seen—”

“Surely that is not the news.”

“No of course, I was only trying to—never mind. So there I was, between Franklin and Barrow. The conversation eventually touched on the letter to _The Standard—_ Barrow rather pressed Franklin on it—and then the one gentleman swore to the other that he never wrote anything false or absentminded and was tutored very soundly in spelling. Barrow looked right at me and, well, damme! Was I to contradict my commander to my patron?”

“So,” Crozier looked out the window at the sheets of rain and tried to collect his thoughts. The absurdity of the situation repelled his understanding. “You did what, exactly, instead?”

Fitzjames fidgeted. “Well I confirmed what Franklin said.”

“Confirmed.”

“I tell you I was in a deuced awkward spot, Crozier, after you went after his spelling in the papers!”

“You mean that in all the awkwardness of creation you thought yourself facing something _worse_ than telling Sir John Barrow that we are—” he found he could not say it.

“At the time it seemed really the thing to do,” said Fitzjames.

“Did it!” said Crozier.

Fitzjames looked chagrined. “So in Barrow’s mind at least the matter, and I own my part in it, is settled. We two are—” he made an impatient _et cetera_ gesture.

Crozier tried again: “He thinks we are are—”

“Yes. We are—”

“Are—”

“Married, Francis?” said Miss Sophia Cracroft, stepping into the parlor. Crozier felt the floor buck beneath him. “How extraordinary.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we go folks that's CHAPTER ONE of the labor of my heart, the story I was born to tell. Here are some notes.
> 
> 1\. Crozier had danced at least one quadrille on Terror, at a ball held aboard Erebus and Terror in Hobart 1841, and possibly also on New Year's Day in 1842, though that party was mostly held in a hollowed-out iceberg. Crozier's early Arctic exploration is like. sort of just a Jagermeister brand campaign.
> 
> 2\. Certain civil departments of the Admiralty held offices at Somerset House, the rest being at Whitehall, where Horse Guards Parade might be a good place to catch a glimpse of Wellington or, maybe, just hang out? Listen I don't live in the 19th century.
> 
> 3\. Penguin shit is apparently called penguin guano. Fitzjames and Le Vesconte just can't avoid guano!
> 
> 4\. The Rattler's trials did indeed make 10 knots! But Erebus's, held in April, made an "estimated" 3 :( Terror seems to have not had any trials
> 
> 5\. Henry Mayhew and Mark Lemon were the joint editors of Punch at the time
> 
> 6\. The weather gage! It means being upwind.
> 
> 7\. Lying ahull is a way of weathering a storm
> 
> 8\. Since Crozier addressed letters to both Rosses, (and lived with them in the three months before the expedition left) it's an ok assumption that he was friendly with Ann and how wacky is it that I'm working to justify that detail in a story where he marries Fitzjames
> 
> 9\. The Senior was the United Service Club, a gentlemen's club for senior officers (at 116 Pall Mall where you can now book meeting rooms that feature some nice-looking business communications solutions)
> 
> 10\. The blancmange actually was the news
> 
> OK that's all until next time! Please find me on [tumblr](http://bro-stoevsky.tumblr.com)!


	2. A Fragile Accord

“It is very much the morning to come calling on Captain Crozier,” said Lady Ross without a hint of apology. She showed her newest guest in.

Sophia had avoided the worst of the rain, and though the hem of her wool skirt had wicked up some water she looked altogether fresh and dry. For all the horrible embarrassment of the situation, she was a welcome sight.

“Sophia,” said Crozier, taking her hand.

“Francis,” she furrowed her brow at him.

“I have much to tell you,” he said very quietly, “later.”

Fitzjames cleared his throat and shuffled his hat under an elbow. Crozier took his hand from Sophia’s and a step back from her person.

“Miss Cracroft,” Fitzjames said, breaking the silence. “What complete pleasure. And Lady Ross. Excuse me all of you, but I must be off, I am overdue at the Observatory. And what do we know but the nature of magnets may be changing by the minute.”

“That accords very ill with what I know of nature,” said Sophia.

“And magnets,” said Lady Ross. “Certainly sir you must know the physical phenomena are quite immutable—the attraction of opposite poles and so forth. The change is rather in our understanding.”

“What that I could learn from this fair company! Excluding yourself, Crozier—not for cause, certainly your expertise in these matters is unchallenged—my choice of the word ‘fair’ I daresay—well—” Fitzjames cleared his throat and seemed to have nothing else to say. He gave the room a self-effacing smile and it was Sophia who laughed. She had a charming laugh, warm and faintly teasing, and her sense of humor was discerning.

Or so Crozier had thought.

“How unfortunate for Commander Fitzjames that he must be going,” he said.

“Yes of course,” said Fitzjames, making finally for the door. “ _Sic parvis magnets_ , and everything. Lady Ross. Miss Cracroft. Good morning to you both. Crozier—I don’t doubt we shall see one another soon enough.”

“Terribly soon,” said Crozier.

“Well that was awfully uncivil,” said Lady Ross when the door was shut.

“Like my uncle with the puppy,” said Sophia. “When of course the poor thing simply doesn’t know to leave the carpets dry and the grass watered.”

“That is,” said Crozier, “more apt than you could possibly know. Only the carpets are a man’s life and every hope for future happiness, and the grass another man’s—I hope that I am in company where I may call it so—foolish pride.”

“I find your metaphor labyrinthine,” said Lady Ross. “Plain speech suits you much better. Shall I arrange some tea?”

She left them alone in the parlor as blithely as if Crozier had been Sophia’s brother.

“You know I am visiting you against Lady Franklin’s specific wish,” said Sophia, taking a seat on the sofa with a gentle rasp of wool shifting against linen. “She thinks you insulted Sir John before all of London.”

“As I was in Kent at the time,” said Crozier, “I do not see how that is possible.”

“New evidence!” said Sophia. “But of course you’re right—by reason of jurisdiction the two of you have had no trouble and are the best of friends! How silly of me to have thought anything at all was the matter. I should be back at home with my aunt, then. Maybe I am there already, since as you say there never was a reason for me to be anxious.”

“That’s not at all what I meant,” said Crozier, without a real idea of what he had meant. He frowned lamely at his hands. “Nor did I mean to goad Sir John in the press.”

“No, you meant to show off that you are smarter than he is. But Francis can you not see that everybody knows that? Everybody. All of London—and I include Woolwich—knows this. The gazettes know it, Pearce and Back and Sabine and the Rosses know it. And most of all, Sir John himself knows it, so you see he can never admit it.”

“The situation is preposterous,” said Crozier. “Surely even he must see that.”

“Careful with your ‘even,’ sir. A great many things are preposterous,” Sophia replied tartly. “And as British subjects we are expected to bear them with serenity and good cheer.”

“You can’t possibly mean that he has no intention of clarifying himself.”

“None, Francis. Not the slightest intention. You know him. He hoards his personal honor, he scars from every cut.”

“ _His_ honor! What of my own? What of—” the fist he had made with his hand was inappropriate in Sophia’s company, and he paused to relax his posture. “Will you not intercede?”

“I did not think you would put me in such a position.”

Crozier sighed deeply. “You must know, Sophia, that I would never put you in a position which is in the smallest way uncomfortable to you.”

“Then be dutiful, Francis, and show Sir John your friendship. Extend your hand, he will forgive you, and you will be welcome again.”

She had invoked a powerful deity. Duty had held him upright before, when cold and weariness and might have ended him. Duty had brought him back from the continent and dispersed the clouds of his misery like wind. And while having happiness in the latter years of his life was a cautious hope, duty would be with him to his grave. If it trapped him now, he could hardly resent it.

“You believe _this_ is my duty? To apologize to Sir John?”

“Surely you must believe it also.”

“To apologize will confirm this ridiculous fiction. To end, in some circles, the belief that I am a bachelor. To end in all of them the belief that I am not mad. My name will be surrounded with civil and social confusion. And probably spelled ‘Cozier.’”

“Oh certainly,” Sophia agreed. “And what a comforting name in the winter months, or whenever it is cold.”

“And what of you and—”

Sophia shook her head firmly. “Francis, do not. You have my assured friendship and you must be content with it. Now offer Sir John yours. For you have promised not to make me uncomfortable, and if you are forbidden to visit, I will be uncomfortable indeed.”

He had been outmaneuvered by Sir John Franklin. Sir John Franklin, merry, titled, and complacent, who in the whole of his somehow impressive naval career had only ever outsmarted some lichen, and that only allegedly. Crozier thought of duty. “I will make my peace with him. I promise.”

“Oh, bravo,” said Lady Ross, coming back into the room, “nobly said!”

Sophia took his hand. “I am happy to hear it, and my uncle will be happier. He has something for you, by the way, in the event of your reconciliation.”

 

* * *

 

What Sir John had for him, he discovered later in the week, was a gigantic Newfoundland dog with paws the size of deadeyes and a bark like a broadside. Crozier saw his hand disappear in the black fur when he bent to scratch the creature’s neck.

“I picked him up for the voyage,” said Sir John. “I remember how you and Sir James had something similar in Hobart. However we have now been a week with the creature and it will not do. I cannot abide the indiscipline and Lady Franklin cannot abide the fur. She wanted me to give him to Fitzjames, but you know how that fellow lives—”

“I do _not_ ,” said Crozier.

Sir John carried on: “And so I suggested, and she agreed, that you might like to take him aboard _Terror_.”

“How kind of you to think of it,” said Crozier, cross at hearing he was the second choice to care for an unwanted dog, of all things. Despite himself, he bent to scratch the creature again. It sat down and thumped the floor with its huge tail.

“Never mind at all, my dear fellow,” said Franklin magnanimously. “You are my first and only choice for the poor unwanted thing.”

 _“Terror_ is dry docked still, but I will happily return for him in a month or so,” said Crozier, still scratching the dog. It sat down and thumped the floor with its huge tail.

“Never mind the ship then, you may bring him home with you. He takes a beefsteak or so in the evening, or a grilled bone, whatever is handy. And though he will likely try to sleep in your bed—that is your affair—you must keep him off the carpets.”

“A beefsteak,” said Crozier weakly.

“Or a grilled bone will do him nicely,” Sir John agreed. “His name is Sweetlips.”

The dog let out a long whine. Crozier stared down at him. “Surely not.”

“Not that he answers to it.” Sir John turned his attention down to the dog. “Sweetlips! Sweetlips!”

The dog turned its head from him quite coolly.

“I see,” said Crozier.

“Yes, well, there it is. I thought you’d be pleased,” said Sir John, drawing back. Crozier reflected on Sophia’s prudent words, _he scars at every cut._

“Oh, I am,” said Crozier awkwardly, trying to arrange his face in an expression of gratitude. “Unspeakably pleased.”

“Good,” said Sir John, and smiled. There was some measure of judgment in it; placated, but not thoroughly duped. He had shown signs in recent months of being cannier than Crozier remembered—had negotiated down the price on the expedition’s provisions to next to nothing, had duped Crozier into publicly agreeing to a fictitious marriage with his fellow officer, and had developed an occasional furrowed expression of serious thought. Taken altogether it was unsettling.

“About the newspaper,” Crozier began.

Sir John lifted his hand. “Say no more about it.”

“You know I am the last person in the world to want to cause you any embarrassment,” he continued. “And had I known your mind—well, had I tried—I did not think, sir, and I am so sorry for it.”

“I am gratified to hear it,” said Sir John. He took Crozier’s hand. “But Francis, be easy. I forgive you freely. We are friends again, the matter is closed. You must be easy, it will be forgotten in a week, and we’ll all laugh about it in Greenhithe.”

Crozier smiled, feeling a now-familiar premonitory dread. “Of course,” he agreed. “A week.”

On leaving Franklin’s townhouse Crozier found that no coach would admit the dog (“Fetch him a harness and he can pull!” said one driver) and they were obliged to walk. Although he clutched the braided leather leash Franklin had given him, he found that the dog walked easily and happily by his side, only occasionally pausing to sniff something unmentionable, and only once barking so loudly that a child across the street began to cry.

“I have decided,” Crozier told the dog, “Sweetlips is no name at all for you. If my fortune is to be tied to every floppy-haired creature to ever lick Sir John’s boots then at least one of them shall be sensibly named. Neptune or Triton, I think, since you’re off to sea. Or Proteus or Rhodes, but what benefit is there to an obscure choice? We are a voyage of discovery, not of classical education. Neptune, then.”

Neptune stuck his face into a hedge. “No, Neptune!” Crozier cried. The dog did not immediately answer to the new name and had to be hauled out, chewing something that was beyond Crozier’s power to retrieve. But there was little to be done about it. About any number of things. Crozier sighed, overcome by a familiar sense that the odds were stacked against him.

“Nothing to be done,” said Crozier. But Neptune barked thunderously in sympathy, and he felt his heart lighten.

On the other side of the hedge, another child began to cry.

 

* * *

 

_Blackheath, London_

_2 April 1845_

_My dear Thomas,_

_It may be that things are looking up and this awful business is behind me. I am left not happy but at least with more mundane problems, engines and crews and iron cladding and Fitzjames whispering in Sir John’s ear that Arctic Service is a capital hobby for gentlemen but nothing at all like real work. On_ Erebus _I cannot say how much Arctic Experience there is to go around, but it is not an exaggeration to say it could be measured in a teacup. They have not an Ice Master yet but the wardroom is as crowded as a ball at Hanover-square. Would that it were Captain Ross and Captain Crozier together again on our old ships. But his choice is quite clear and I cannot begrudge him. He and Lady Ross are the kindest hosts imaginable and say you must join us all soon for dinner and I dearly hope only a little singing. Too much of it and the dog will bark, I have trained him myself. I am less melancholy and still your true friend,_

_Francis Crozier_

 

* * *

 

 “It’s a point-to-point, basically,” said Fitzjames. He was leaning over a map of the eastern coast of England, gesturing grandly to ports Crozier knew better than his own home. Sir John looked on with interest.

“It isn’t,” said Crozier.

Fitzjames carried on: “Sailed from Woolwich to Yarmouth Roads. Aboard we will have a small crew making constant note of the speed, the power exerted by the engine, and the forward thrust—this will allow us to later calculate the horsepower of the shaft itself—the depth and the slip of the screw, _et cetera_ , but of course the real purpose of the thing is that the last one to Yarmouth Roads is a rotten egg.”

“Hear, hear,” said Sir John, his eyes brightening.

“No,” said Crozier again, trying to break in before Sir John could work up too much enthusiasm about racing two arctic bombers down the Thames and up the coast. “No sir, I believe Fitzjames is being more clever than clear. It is a trial, meant to gauge the practical use of what is—and forgive me but I must say it again—very experimental equipment. The engine will be used only rarely in the ice; if tacking itself is a danger we will hardly be breaking any records or indeed carrying much sail. The speed, therefore, is irrelevant.”

Fitzjames cast him an annoyingly patient glance. “Not wholly irrelevant, the—”

“ _Mostly_ irrelevant,” said Crozier. “Speed is less relevant to a trial of an icebreaker’s engine than it is, for example, to riding a point-to-point.”

“Lieutenant Gore,” said Fitzjames, “will you be so good as to make some official note of Captain Crozier’s disapproval? Otherwise I fear we shall not be able to move on to other business.”

“Gentlemen,” said Sir John, but he had nearly laughed at Fitzjames’s remark. “Graham, you must do no such thing. Francis, I take your point fully, and of course you’re right. It will be slow going through the ice, and we must not exert ourselves overmuch for speed in these trials.”

“Thank you for saying so,” said Crozier, savoring the details of even such a minor victory. There had been few in his career, and so far between.

“Anyway I must be going, and you must be off yourselves quite soon I think,” Sir John went on. “I will see you gentlemen in three days’ time. I await the result of your trials most anxiously. God protect you until we meet again.”

“Whatever else,” said Fitzjames as soon as Sir John’s footsteps had retreated, “I’ve got a guinea on _Erebus_.”

“And I on _Terror_ ,” said Crozier immediately.

Fitzjames lifted his eyebrows, but put out his hand. “I’m surprised at you, Crozier, but I can’t say I’m not pleased. You see, I could do with a guinea.”

“Oh,” said Crozier with the darkest menace he could summon. He shook Fitzjames’s hand. “So could I.”

 

* * *

 

Later the same morning they left Woolwich under plain sail and in good weather—if with somewhat more wind blowing south than Crozier and his wallet would have preferred. As they made their way past Shoeburyness Blanky found him on deck and offered Crozier a match for his pipe.

“What will elude me until I die,” Blanky said, “is the understanding of why it seemed to you in the moment that a very intimidating thing to say was that you _could do with a guinea_.”

“I wasn’t trying to intimidate anyone,” said Crozier. The southerly wind buffeted the first puff of his pipe back into his face.

“Which gives me great relief, since you did nothing like it. But I wonder do you know how far you went in the opposite direction?”

Crozier scowled. “I’m a sailor, not a character in a novel. What did you expect me to say?”

“Something better than, _‘Oh so could I.’”_

“Better? There are better ice masters.”

“Here?”

Crozier handed him the matchbook. “I could put an advertisement in the newspaper and have one meet us tomorrow.”

“I’d say you’ve put enough things in newspapers lately, but then, I’m only the best ice master available to you at the moment and no philosopher.”

“You seem to think yourself the wit of the age.”

Blanky shrugged humbly. “Mrs. Blanky says much the same thing. Talking of which, how goes your wedded—well, I can’t say bliss, not after _I could use a guinea too_ —but, shall I say, your wedded state? You seemed to think it had blown over last you wrote.”

“Thank the lord, I think Sir John may have been right on this one. It seems it is finally out of people’s minds.”

“Not mine.”

“Regular people’s minds.”

“That’s as may be. So all it took was a bit of a grovel to Sir John?”

Crozier took a deep breath of smoke. “That, and a promise never again to contradict him on the subject. And I had to take the dog.”

“Had to, my eye. You love that dog. And never have I seen an animal so loyal, even in the odd hours when you’re not handing him a beefsteak. To be honest, I blush that Sir John has done so much by way of furnishing your future happiness: Fitzjames had been a good prospect, and Neptune is very much a good dog. While true but less grand friends such as I can only offer you good counsel.”

“Happiness? You saw how ready he was to crack up the coast at top speed. Sir John has furnished my future demise, more likely than my happiness.”

“Could be both,” said Blanky philosophically. “But as the queen’s true subject I must say that, over time, your happiness would be of greater benefit to the service than your demise. So you’ll hear my advice?”

“I don’t see how I can avoid it.”

“If you can’t swim, neither can I. Don’t be horrible to him, Frank. We’re against the odds enough as it is without you go a bit easier. And don’t forget I know you; you will wound yourself far worse. Put happiness in your mind rather than demise.”

Crozier turned his face to the windward air, which blew smoke off the bowl of his pipe. It had always been as easy for Blanky to voice his real thoughts and true affections as it was for him to tell the time. Was this how men spoke to one other on whaling ships, without personal agenda or any restraint? In Crozier’s particular naval career there had been little opportunity to take a compliment and even less to declare friendship.

“This is the Royal Navy, Tom. There is much more by way of demise on offer than happiness.”

“Well, there’s nothing worth having they haven’t found a way to be miserly with. Which makes me think, can you actually afford to give anyone a guinea?”

Crozier clutched his pipe more tightly between his teeth.

“Well,” said Blanky. “While I am being generous with my advice, I think we might carry the slightest bit more sail.”

 

* * *

 

In the end _Terror_ made it to harbor a scant twenty minutes before _Erebus_ , and Crozier awaited her officers on the quay along with Blanky, his first lieutenant Edward Little, and an unfamiliar lift to his lips that might have been self-satisfaction.

“Well I can’t pay you now,” said Fitzjames, as if that should have been obvious from the start.

“You’ve let Captain Crozier in on the family motto, then?” said Le Vesconte.

“Crozier have I told you,” said Fitzjames, “that the amount of guano we endured on _Clio_ was rivaled only by the amount of damnable impertinence? Anyway if Englishmen paid our debts immediately I daresay there would be no reason at all for us to appear in society.”

Immediately Blanky’s words of caution were overcome by a powerful sense of annoyance. Fitzjames was very blithe, very comfortable—had he ever paid a debt in his life? He would have taken Crozier’s money without a second thought. And what was money to gentlemen, who thought it was brought by the rain.

“There’s porter,” Blanky chuckled. Crozier shot him a glare, which Blanky seemed to deign not to see.

“How true,” said Fitzjames. “And Bakewell pudding, though to be honest I don’t really see why one should have to leave one’s home for it. Talking of which, after we’ve wrapped up with our records, there’s rather a good pub on Regent Road where I confess Henry and I are something of a regular sight—”

“I have business with the Board of Ordnance,” Crozier said before Fitzjames could work his way to an invitation to another boisterous dinner party. “It will take me quite late, so I don’t think I will see any of you before tomorrow.”  

Fitzjames blinked at him. “Yes of course, we’ve all got quite a lot to do. Mr. Blanky, Mr. Little, may we count on you around nine o’clock?”

“You will find, Commander, that I am always to be counted on around nine o’clock,” said Blanky. Crozier could not help but give him a second resentful look at this fresh betrayal.

“How topping,” said Fitzjames. “You see I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the penguins—and as it seems we’ll be passing the Glorious Twelfth in the Arctic I’ll be glad of a bit more education. Only we shall never be allowed to come home if we don’t do our best for a good bag.”

“Oh, there’s much to know about their ways,” said Blanky. He made a last bid for peace: “Though Captain Crozier might advise you better. Francis, are you sure your meeting will be as late as that?”

“Quite sure,” Crozier replied testily.

“Well, never mind,” said Fitzjames. “Mr. Little?”

“If Captain Crozier can spare me,” said Little. There was a note of hopefulness in his voice that Crozier had never himself heard. Wasn’t that typical of the Royal Navy, to respect a man more for the promise of an entertaining conversation than for diligence and rigor?

“Certainly I can,” said Crozier, “as it is not my place to interrupt anyone’s leisure at the seaside.”

Fitzjames sighed like he was worried they wouldn’t hear him in the loges. Blanky said nothing, only stared at his old friend with indecipherable judgment.

“Of course,” said Little. “Captain Crozier, Commander Fitzjames, forgive me, I was not trying at all to shirk my duties.”

“Nor would any gentleman think it, Mr. Little,” said Fitzjames. Despite these gallant words, he wore a expression of utter bafflement, like no one in his entire life had dared to suggest that one lieutenant in all the Royal Navy might have better things to do than spend the night at a pub with James Fitzjames.

Crozier turned his back to the lot of them.

The Board of Ordnance was in fact a minor errand, and he was back at his desk on _Terror_ at the end of sunset, pouring his own whiskey and halfheartedly hoping that Blanky would tire of the merriness before long and seek him out. _Well Francis, weren’t you right about Fitzjames,_ he’d say. _What a tiresome prick_. He closed his eyes and thought about it some more.

When a knock came at his door he started sleepily. “Come on,” he said, rousing himself, expecting Blanky.

“Do excuse me,” said Fitzjames as he crossed the threshold, his voice very loud in the gloomy cabin. “On deck they said you were hard at work, but of course I should have known that even the most assiduous of officers do sleep _occasionally_. Another time, perhaps.”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” said Crozier.

Fitzjames looked at the desk, where the single glass was not quite empty. “Of course,” he said. He had probably come in on the tide of some revelry—men cajoling or betting him to go see what in the world Crozier had been up to all night—and without the enthusiasm of a crowd his confidence was bleeding away fast.

Crozier had no interest in making it easier. “What time is it?” he asked.

Fitzjames reached into his coat and glanced at his repeater. “Awfully late. But this need not be a long interview. I owe you a guinea, sir,” he said, and placed a gold sovereign on the desk, “it was well-sailed.”

Crozier stared at him. “You said you didn’t have it.”

“That was earlier,” said Fitzjames like it was any sort of proper explanation.

“So you decided to settle your debt in the middle of the night?”

“Well you seemed so cross about it—Crozier, I wonder if I might blame the incivility of the hour and be very honest with you?”

“I won’t stop you,” said Crozier.

Fitzjames had caught himself fidgeting, and quietly put his hands behind his back. He took a breath. “I know you are a stern man and I admire you for it. I know you think officers who have not seen your service to be far beneath you and I am very sure we are. But whatever else you think of me, I came by this appointment honestly. And—well—it will be a very long voyage if we continue as we have begun, there it is.”

Crozier had expected almost anything else, and took a moment to collect himself. But of course Blanky, being unwilling to venture out with warring captains and seeing that Crozier was implacable, had worked on Fitzjames to sue for peace. Though it was certainly unlike him to act on the wishes of anyone ranking less than an admiral.

“It will be a long voyage no matter what we do,” Crozier said.

“Of course,” said Fitzjames, defeated. “I will leave you to your—”

“But you’re right,” Crozier went on, thinking that actually Blanky was _right_ , and Fitzjames just couldn’t stand that someone in the world didn’t like him. “We must wipe the slate clean.”

“Very decent of you,” said Fitzjames, obviously relieved. “Very decent indeed. It has been a rough acquaintance, I don’t mind telling you. And that business with _marital_ , well, I am sorry for my part in it.”

“A sorry business,” said Crozier, “but it is behind us now." He reminded himself that he had his position, his small number of true friends, and his loyal dog. Those comforts, meager though they were, could not be taken. Not by John Franklin or Jane Franklin or even James Fitzjames.

But only a week later, he walked through the Ross’s door in London to find a sea chest in the hall ominously engraved with the initials _J.F._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this is how long it takes me to write new chapters! but don't worry I will never lose my gigantic arctic boner (ew?) for this pairing. A special final shoutout to PlinytheYounger who came all the way to the best-lit bar in London to understandingly listen to me hand-wring about this plot and overswipe on tinder. It's Time For Notes!
> 
> 1\. _Sic parvis magna_ was Sir Francis Drake's motto, and Fitzjames in this story is a nervous punner. 
> 
> 2\. Woolwich was part of Kent until 1888 when it became part of London, so Crozier is technically correct, the best kind of correct. 
> 
> 3\. I googled "19th century dog names" and discovered [Sweetlips](https://www.littlethings.com/1800s-dog-names/5), arguably the worst dog name in human history. "Could there be a cuter pet name?" asks the article. I believe there could be. 
> 
> 4\. Did Victorians say "last one to x is a rotten egg"? Probably not since they said hardly anything normal. 
> 
> 5\. The Glorious Twelfth is the start of the shooting season for red grouse (and was in 1845) but !not! penguins. 
> 
> 6\. Though the last few guineas likely remained in circulation in 1845 (they were gone, we know, by 1846, because they had been collected by the Royal Mint along with a large number of underweight sovereigns), they had been officially replaced with the gold sovereign, though people continued to refer to the value represented by both coins as a guinea, because it sounded classier. Isn't this the kind of thrilling sexual detail you are reading fanfiction for? i know i am


	3. An Intramural Chapter

The scene set itself slowly, like something written by a novelist who got his pay by the word. In the hall, Crozier found a sea chest. Immediately apparent was that it was not his own plain cedar wood chest. Neither was it Ross’s. At the front the letters _J.F._ were shallowly carved, and it was not fine enough to belong to Sir John Franklin.

Crozier then heard the sound of laughter. He followed it from the hall to the parlor. Inside, as casual with each another as old shipmates, holding glasses of whiskey and occupying the furniture expansively, were Sir James Clark Ross and James Fitzjames.

From the bloody Wedgwood plate on which Neptune focused his enthusiastic attention, it was to be concluded that they had been feeding Crozier’s dog beefsteak on top of everything.

He stood thunderstruck. Had he no solace from this man? Nowhere to go where Fitzjames would not follow, no friends to trust that Fitzjames would not take from him? There was his own dog licking the man’s hand.

“We do not but speak of him, and he appears!” said Ross jovially. “Crozier my dear chap, do come in. We were only just lamenting your absence.”

“Lamenting,” said Crozier. He heard the petulance in his voice as soon as he spoke and gathered himself, straightening his back as he entered the room.

“Lamenting,” said Ross firmly, as sensitive to the signs of Crozier’s mood as to the weather. “Take a glass with us, won’t you? If you will not we will carry on drinking to your health as you stand here and I don’t think any of us could bear it.”

Neptune let out a whine and thumped his tail on the ground. Fitzjames, infuriatingly, put a hand on his head—and after that, the whining stopped.

“I wouldn’t want to be an ungrateful guest,” said Crozier, the decanter already in his hand, “but what is the occasion?”

Fitzjames looked down at the dog, who Crozier noted with displeasure returned the glance.

Ross laughed. “Fitzjames here was due a bit of an arduous duty tot, and I thought I’d keep him company while he waited for you to return.”

Crozier wet his throat. “Waited for me to return,” he repeated. “Why?”

“To speak with you, of course. Really, Francis. And I think you’ll like to hear it—Fitzjames when you first told me the story I must have gone unconscious for a minute laughing.”

“A long trip to tell me a joke,” said Crozier. He took a place on the sofa next to Ross, establishing absolute at which side of the room was the quarterdeck. He was pleased when Neptune left the foot of Fitzjames’s chair to come greet him.

Ross was grinning. “Not exactly,” he said.

“It is a funny old business in any case,” said Fitzjames, giving them the weak pretense of a smile. “To do with my landlady. You see according to the terms of my tenancy, I must be a bachelor while I have my bed, and—ha. Well, somehow she has got the rather rum notion that I ain’t one.”

Ross, always easily delighted, was laughing outright. “Franklin’s _marital_ again, Francis, can you credit it! To think they made our poor friend a governor, never mind where, a governor! How many writs and ordinances do you think he left behind him for a _Van Damen’s Land_ or a city called _Herbert_? But go on and give him the rest of it, Fitzjames, weren’t you chased out at dawn? With a rugbeater? Lord, would that I could have seen it.”

Fitzjames tapped a finger on his glass, thinking. It had been apparent that he was the sort of man to compose his lines before delivering them, but rarely was the process so transparent. “As I said sir, it was damnable early, I don’t think anyone had the pleasure of seeing it but possibly the watchman. But you have the plot exact. The poor lady having the most dismal view of seafaring professions generally, believing myself specifically to be guilty of the most profound perjury, and having the rugbeater close at hand, well—taken together it was too much. She found she could not suffer me under her roof a moment longer. And so,” he cast his gaze around the room, and seeming to find no place for it to light he spoke at last with a shrug, addressing no one in particular: _“Me voici.”_

As Ross’s feeble attempts to smother his laughter failed, a part of Crozier’s mind recoiled. These could be the last days he would spend with his greatest friend, the merry homelike memories he had hoped to hoard and gloat over when he went to sea. To have Fitzjames in those memories appalled him.

“Honestly!” cried Ross, clutching his knee.

Crozier ignored him and addressed Fitzjames: “And so the dunnage I observed in the hall?”

“My own,” Fitzjames replied.

“Have you nowhere else to go?”

“I had thought to go to Sir John,” Fitzjames allowed, with a laugh at that folly. “But judged it was not meet, while his niece stays.”

“For which we do not blame you in the least,” Ross interjected. “Really, Francis, a man hardly likes to be questioned in this manner when he had begun his day staring down a, a—”

“—A loaded rugbeater, rather,” said Fitzjames.

Ross’s laughter was abrupt enough to make Crozier start, his whiskey sloshing dangerously close to the rim of the glass.

“Come now, Frank,” said Ross, catching his breath to appeal more gently to his friend. “It’s agreed, anyway, to my wife’s delight. It is easier on her if her friends may dine without she must pull gentlemen from hither and yon—or God protect us, my uncle. As for me, I thought, it’s the least I can do.”

“I see,” said Crozier.

Ross smiled. “No less than you would do, I think.”

“I wonder,” said Crozier.

“I am sincerely grateful to you sir, and to Lady Ross,” said Fitzjames to Ross. “And Crozier—as he says. No less. I am heartily sure.”

Neptune thumped his tail on the floor with enough force to rattle the plate.

* * *

 

The next day _Erebus_ and _Terror_ were sailed west into the city to be provisioned. The date of their sailing was now only weeks away, and the panic of the deadline had set in. The men’s work hours were all exceeded, the clerks at Goldner’s and Fraser’s were threatened almost as a matter of routine, and men from what seemed like a hundred newspapers crawled over the ships so that they nearly outnumbered the hands.

Soon they would be sailing. Once Crozier had reflected on that prospect with cheer, but slowly cheer had been diluted with worry, until it often felt like dread.

The dread, he knew, was at the prospect of his loneliness. That this expedition would be made without the comfort of Ross’s fellowship hurt more than he could express, more than he had even thought possible.

Ross had done what his honor had demanded—more specifically, what Thomas Coulman had demanded—and Crozier could not hold it against him. Or, as he did at his least generous, hold it against his wife. But the fact remained that Ross was leaving Crozier alone. Alone for years, alone in the bone-cracking cold, alone for months of night. Of course he had Blanky, but Blanky was not a commissioned naval officer, and certain things could never be the same.

Everyone wanted him to befriend Fitzjames, a man who resembled Ross in some scanty ways, and who was being thrust in Crozier’s path at every turn besides. Who now lived under the same roof. The situation had every quality of an arranged marriage—down to the detail of the actual marriage, which Sir John stuck to whenever he was asked.

As if it were ever easier to like a man in close quarters. The sight of Fitzjames at the breakfast table, sharing sheets of his newspaper with Lady Ross, or tipping his hat ceremoniously to the dog on his way in at night, made Crozier feel foreign and old. What had he to say to this energetic young officer, who apparently had never gotten out of bed without embarking on the type of rollicking caper that involved a broken heirloom, an angry vicar, and a cheering village? He had none of Ross’s sensitivity, none of his nerve, and Crozier would be alone.

He stormed about his ship and gloomed about Ross’s home.

“All well, Frank?” Ross asked him one evening, leaning over Crozier to ash his cigar in his dish. Fitzjames and Lady Ross were across the room at the piano, puzzling over some new sheet she had ordered.

“Our tinned provisions are delayed again,” said Crozier, thinking it the better cause for his mood. “Sir John says it is no matter and trusts it to Goldner’s ingenuity, but I think we may hardly rely on new solutions for an error of such senior proportions.”

Ross gave it some thought, sitting down in the chair beside Crozier and taking charge of the dish. “I’ve heard about those tins,” he said. “Of course if it were me I would delay and leave it to the clerks at the Admiralty to bear the consequence. Those fellows have let themselves be fleeced abominably. But you will hardly be without adequate provisions, why, I’ve seen your orders. We should have been so lucky in ’39!”

“We were lucky enough then. In our men not least of all. Now—well, there is inexperience to go ‘round, James. What I would give for just a few more old hands.”

Ross smiled, understanding. “I’m afraid you’re the old hand, now.”

“And I know it,” said Crozier with a resentful glance at the piano.

“You must set the example then, I regret to say. Wear your mittens. Keep your spirits up. Find the damned Passage,” Ross set down his cigar and looked at him. “You do know I long to be there when you do it?”

Crozier, with deplorable weakness, wished that he would make it so, tell Barrow he had changed his mind and join them. 

“But you know better than anyone that I can’t,” Ross went on, heading him off as if he had read his thoughts. “My honored father-in-law would wring my neck with one hand if ever those words should reach him.”

Crozier laughed miserably. “That he would,” he allowed.

Ross nodded, picking up his cigar again. “Just so. And I know you will not hear it, but Fitzjames is a steady fellow.”

Crozier looked at the piano again. Fitzjames was hammering out the counterpoint to Lady Ross’s melody so leadenly that she laughed, knocking his hands away from the keys.

“So everyone says,” said Crozier. “I cannot stand still without someone listing all his virtues at me.”

“I won’t tire you out with them, then. But I tell you that all those many friends want nothing from him, from what I can tell—he has got his sycophants quite outside the usual way. I believe he will be an ornament to your expedition. And to your circle, if you will but allow it.”

Crozier scoffed. “’Ornament,’ he says! How stupid I was to think you were running a private home here, not a club for handsome men named James where they may flatter each other in comfort.”

Ross winked at him, taking the cigar in his hand so he could grin wider. “I must have something to do with my time now that I am retired from exploration, don’t you know. And if you think that flattering, you should hear what I told him about you, you must have blisters on your ears.”

Crozier gaped, which gave Ross plain satisfaction. “I hope, whatever you said, that it did not include the word ‘ornament.’”

But Ross did not carry on with the joke. “All will be well, my friend. Even without me, hard as it is to say.” He reached over, grasping Crozier’s arm with a shake. “All will be well.”

Crozier had not the heart to tell Ross he had solved nothing, and nodded. “I’ll do as you ask, James. Wear my mittens. Set an example.”

“No man could ask more,” said Ross.

The piano went silent before Ross was finished speaking, so his wife heard enough to interject: “I am no man, my dear, but I am afraid I must ask a little more of _you_ than the usual, at least in the way of conduct, for your uncle is coming to dine tomorrow evening.”

Ross, who had been taking a self-satisfied lungful off his cigar, began to choke.

* * *

 

 

The truth was that Lady Ross had flung open her doors to society as soon as Fitzjames had got his trunk up the stairs.

Crozier was mortifyingly aware that his friends had probably made their lively home quiet these past months to suit his own taste. They were then extending the same tactful hospitality to Fitzjames, who was animated by company almost as a matter of physical law, the way a lamp consumed fuel.

If ever a lamp had consumed so much.

Sir William Parry and Edward Sabine dined, then Admiral Bailie-Hamilton. Eliot Place had become almost a second Somerset House, so far as polar exploration was concerned. And as for the numbers, the navy was nearly outgunned, for Lady Ross had an entire legion of school friends in uniforms of watered silk and cascading curls, all on their way to or from Bath—where after fifteen minutes of Crozier’s conversation they plainly longed again to be.

But all that social exertion was nothing in comparison to the fatal night on which Lady Ross had invited, along with her own dear friend Sophia Cracroft, her husband's uncle Sir John Ross.

It began comfortably enough, for all that Ross had spent the entire day in such a sullen mood that only Neptune could bear to attend him. Crozier made dull remarks to one of Lady Ross’s friends about the Arctic climate and the London weather. He answered questions about whether there were any seals or seas named after him and how he thought the fellow who smashed a vase at the British Museum ought to be punished. And while it wearied him to produce this talk, it was almost worse to see his companion’s inevitable relief at being released from it, turning with visible gratitude.

Had he chosen to be this grim old explorer? He could recall a time when people found his stories captivating. When he could thrill even himself talking about the icebergs that had floated by him in colossal spires and palisades, the polar lights dripping Scheele’s Green across the night sky, the cold so acute he could feel a lit candle across the room. He had lost the wonder of it some time ago, when he learned how the explorer’s virtues were pulped and dried when exploration was done. How they turned into fiction in gazettes and promotions for men who hardly needed them. It used to anger him that even discovery could be wrought into something that helped society remain the same. And then even that anger had faded into fatigue.

“Not heroic—you do us too much credit,” came Fitzjames’s voice, loud enough to break into Crozier’s thoughts and, curiously, he was speaking on a similar melancholy theme. “I think the sad fact is that the world grows more modern by the minute. The field of glory has dried up, more or less. Sir John Franklin put it rather well the other day, when he said we sought the open polar _tea_.”

Sir John Ross, red-faced before they had even come downstairs, was roused by the invocation of Franklin. He glared down the table at Fitzjames. “He says that, does he?”

Fitzjames could not have appeared more bewildered if Sir John had brandished a pistol at him. “Why, yes sir. I mean, he did, sir.”

“He thinks himself a tea merchant then, on some easy cruise?”

Crozier saw James Ross drain his wineglass.

Fitzjames coughed. “I daresay—”

“—So he is the fool we all knew he was,” said Sir John, “and the fool I warned him he was—for I warned him, a hundred times I warned him! If he imagines that the ice will open up where it has been locked to all his betters, he is risking all for a fool’s hope, and that makes him, didn’t I say it, a fool.”

The conversations around the table had gone silent.

It was Sophia who spoke. “Dear Ann,” she said, her crisp voice cutting through the quiet, “this table is so magnificently large, I am not at all surprised that Sir John has not noticed that the man he speaks of is not here to answer him. Why, it must have as much timber as a sloop.”

“They had to take it down the stairs disassembled,” said Lady Ross with a look of immense gratitude at her friend. “How is your uncle, pray?”

“He has the most dreadful cold, poor man,” replied Sophia serenely. “I shall tell him you asked. It will cheer him, I am sure.”

“We all pray for his quick recovery,” said Ross, and lifted his glass. “A bumper then to Sir John Franklin and his health.”

They all drank. As they did so, Sophia caught Crozier’s eye to make an eloquently exophthalmic expression at him—the relationship of Sir John Ross and his nephew was as treacherous to navigate as any of the poles. Crozier knew a piece of it, more than almost anyone else. Every time John Ross made bold with some new enemy it was James Ross that he hurt.

Crozier surveyed the wreckage. Fitzjames was gray in the face at how close he had come to contradicting a Companion of the Order of the Bath. Sir John, no stranger to the upset that he had caused, had turned his ire on the bearer who had let his glass run low, leaving his nephew at the head of the table with a smile as honest as a gilded farthing.

But they had been served their final course and Lady Ross had only a little opportunity to steer their conversations to the amiable and seemly. Sir John said nothing much in this interim, but after the ladies had gone there was no way around talk of the expedition. By the time the claret had been cleared and changed for brandy, the old gentleman had waited long enough:

“I hear your provisions are delayed again,” he said.

Crozier nodded. “Indeed they are. Though at least the Admiralty think they have got a bargain.”

Sir John snorted. “Franklin should have pressed them harder. Would have if he’d known any better. Or maybe he has a new preparation of _tripe-de-roche_ he’d like to try.”

“Uncle,” said Ross through a clenched jaw. “Please—”

“—I like not to say it in front of the man’s niece, James, it’s true,” Sir John went on, unheeding, “but why shouldn’t I say what I think here, in my own nephew’s home? There has never been any doubt, by God. Franklin is a fool.”

“I say, sir,” said Ross again, with somewhat more energy, “Miss Cracroft has shown us all our duty when you talk so.”

Sir John scoffed and drank. “And why does it fall to you and Miss Cracroft to speak for him? What of his backer Barrow, whose old guts have not the fortitude to hear my warnings? And what of his shipmates?” He turned on Fitzjames, who bit down on his cigar in alarm. “You sir, who say you know him so well, would you really trust Franklin to run a bath?”

Fitzjames inspected the cigar, which was little damaged, and after waiting to see if Judgment Day might be soon forthcoming, replied: “I am flattered by your asking. But it is not for me to have any opinion whatever of my commander, or think of him other than with respectful loyalty and approbation. That I leave to you sir, and to all your experience and honors.”

Though this speech may have served for some, it was precisely the wrong thing to say to Sir John, who placed his glass heavily on the table in a rage. “Such men Barrow trusts!” he growled. “It is a young toady, then, that he has matched with the old fool? You would be more frightened of what awaits you if you had _all my experience and honors_.”

“I see you approve of my cellars, sir,” said Ross. “In any case we had better stand toward the drawing room, certainly they must have expected us an hour ago.”

“Nonsense, I’ve not had my brandy yet,” said Sir John, who indeed was almost at the bottom of his second. He turned back to Fitzjames, and continued: “So tell me then, laddie, where was your service? The Aegean, you will say, and the Nile, and Nanking? There are a hundred ways to die on the ice and you know none of them. None of your agues that you may avert with a nice glass of gin. None of your eight pound shot and splinters. Death that will madden your men with fear of it. And then all your nice manners—your respectful loyalty—will be like your quinine and your gunnery, doing you no good as you die.”

Sir John had said nothing Crozier had not thought. In fact he had often thought much worse. But at this moment it seemed bullying and unfair—Ross would not gainsay his uncle and Fitzjames would not gainsay a knight, least of all one whose memoirs he carried with him in his trunk. Crozier felt the calm and heat of his temper overwhelming him.

“Since you know Commander Fitzjames’s naval service so well,” Crozier said, surprising himself as much as anyone, “then you know that his physical courage exceeds our needs and every standard. What business is it of ours if that courage should come from the Antarctic Circle or the Northern Tropic?”

Fitzjames looked down, tapping his cigar excessively. Ross lifted his eyebrows. From upstairs, the faint sound of the piano could be heard, and over it a great deal of laughter.

Sir John was unmoved. “I thought you had more sense, Crozier,” he said. “Isn’t my nephew here always telling me how much sense you have? Courage is as may be, but what you’ll want is food. And mastery over your men. And a way back. And without them, by thunder, you’ll die.”

Ross stood, losing patience at last. “It has been a long evening. You’ll stay here tonight, Uncle, we have already made ready the room, and my man will help you up the stairs in a minute. Francis—Fitzjames, let us rejoin the ladies, if they are still here.”

* * *

 

But the ladies had gone, leaving only Lady Ross in the drawing room in an attitude of anxious waiting. The room was smoky from the lamps that had burnt all night, and she looked like a very welcome mirage.

“Oh my dear,” she said, putting her hand in Ross’s. “Oh, I shudder to think—are you all very insulted? Has there been a duel?”

Ross caressed her arm before withdrawing to cross the room. “Drunk,” he said, furious in a way he had not given vent to in front of his uncle. He began to pour himself some whiskey, the decanter clanking on the glass. “He’s stone drunk. Damme, insulted does not begin to cover it! He will not rest until all the gossip about him is proven true and everyone who would be his friend is turned against him. Your friends, my dear—what they must think of us.”

Ann only laughed, taking her place again on the settee. “My friends thought it all very amusing, once Sophia laughed. He has very much the air of Coleridge’s mariner—‘he holds him with his glittering eye’ and then makes all sorts of dire predictions when people are trying to eat. Commander Fitzjames, you were a perfect Wedding-Guest.”

“Well I hope I didn’t call anyone a grey-beard loon,” said Fitzjames.

“I almost wish you had,” said Ross. He sat down opposite his wife with a weary sigh, as if he were twenty years older. “Can I excuse my uncle to you both? I fear he is—well, as you witnessed. The quarrel between him and Barrow is a hundred years old, Barrow would forget it, but Sir John cherishes a grudge more than life.”

“We have weathered worse,” Crozier reminded him, taking the place beside him.

“Hear, hear,” said Fitzjames, who seemed to have recovered from the encounter better than Ross. “And it was very fine brandy.”

Lady Ross grimaced. “But I fear there is more indignity to come for our poor guests—gentlemen, I’ve put _the Ancient Mariner_ to bed in Commander Fitzjames’s room. It was that or the floor in the hall, which I am sure you think is no more than he deserves, but in truth this house is simply not equal to so _much_ of the navy as it presently quarters. Berths, I should rather say. May I trust that Captain Crozier’s room will suffice both of you for now? I believe it to be quite a large bed, and there is little enough night left.”

Fitzjames bowed a little. “It is twice the berth he or I shall have at sea, ma’am, do not trouble yourself.”

Crozier found he did not mind overmuch, and as Fitzjames left the room with Lady Ross to assess the new lodging, he watched him go with the same benevolence that had animated him to contradict Sir John Ross.

Ross, next to him on the sofa, was losing his straight posture by degrees until he almost had his head in his hands.

“Can you forgive me,” said Ross, who was occupied in staring at his carpet. It must have been a very small hour; quiet enough through all the house that the drawing room clock could be heard ticking. Ross was leaning forward so the revers of his waistcoat gaped open. Crozier had seen him in worse states of dishevelment, but never in his home.

“What, for your uncle?”

“The devil—not for him, he may say what he likes,” said Ross, shaking his head. “It is for believing he may be right, that I must ask your pardon.”

Crozier felt prophetic tremor of cold. “Trust me more than that, will you, James?”

“I shall no more to sea,” he said, closing his eyes to collect his thoughts. “But Frank—Francis—if you are lost, a thousand Thomas Coulmans will not stop me. I will come there and find you.”

“How I wish—” Crozier drew an unsteady breath, almost throttled by some powerful emotion, and laid a gentle hand on Ross’s knee. “How I wish you could be with us from the start.”

Someone coughed in the doorway, and Crozier flinched back to his place on the sofa as if he was guilty of something. It was Fitzjames, of course, in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, holding the stickpin from his cravat in one hand. His eyebrows were lifted in surprise, though he composed himself as soon as Crozier met his eyes.

“I do beg your pardon, chaps,” he said with another cough. “Crozier we are at sixes and sevens upstairs, Neptune has taken your place already, and mine too if I’m honest, though it is a damned big bed. And I came to ask if you think I should evict the poor fellow, or let him be?”

Crozier sighed. Ross passed a hand over his eyes, straightening his back and nodding a welcome at Fitzjames.

“You must do nothing,” said Crozier, standing with a tug at his waistcoat. “It is quite late. I will follow you upstairs now and roust him out myself.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's another chapter! This takes me! So long! And this one wasn't very funny! At this rate they will kiss slightly before the heat death of the universe. I hope I will see you all there. A special shoutout again to PlinyTheYounger who held my ass as I agonized over this chapter and the sheer number of Rosses (2), Sir Johns (3!), and Jameses (also 2) who are now in play, and also gave me Crucial Ross Info by way of JCR and John Ross's letters which I was too dumb to find. 
> 
> And can I just say I feel like I was writing this at a time when we as a fandom are just Appreciating the bejeezus out of James Clark Ross and like how unspeakably valid of us. He just. Wants. Everyone to be OK. ANyway here's what you need to know:
> 
> 1\. "Arduous duty tot" is like, I think a more modern nautical expression but it is funny so here we are.
> 
> 2\. In the show the ships are right there outside Somerset House which I don't think is historical but neither is Victorian fake marriage. 
> 
> 3\. In the words of PlinyTheYounger, Blanky does not give Crozier "that commissioned officer feeling" I think we all know what I am talking about. 
> 
> 4\. In February of 1845, a drunk guy smashed the Portland Vase at the British Museum and they weren't able to charge him with "willful damage" as that law only applied to things worth less than five pounds, so he was instead charged with the destruction of the vase's glass case. I know this because I read a wikipedia list of things that happened in 1845 when I was looking for dinner party conversation ideas. 
> 
> 5\. Scheele's Green is the toxic one. Crozier doesn't know that, but we can!
> 
> 6\. "The open polar tea" is not a funny joke in an 1845 context but it is slightly funnier in a 2019 context where it might mean a bunch of hot fresh gossip.
> 
> 7\. Claret AND brandy? idk seems like a lot even for Victorians but hey the Rosses are Fun
> 
> 8\. Sir John Ross and Sir John (see!) Barrow were not yet in full-on Pamphlet Battle, but Ross was mad that Barrow was mad because he made up a bunch of geographical features. History side of fandom did I do ok?
> 
> 9\. "Mine your courage from a different latitude" 
> 
> 10\. The math: # of cigars consumed in this chapter: 6. # of cigars destroyed for comic effect: 2. 
> 
> Ok that's it see you next chapter, in like 5 months, for Victorian PJs, bed sharing, and ANOTHER party.


End file.
